Review by Booklist Review
Mick Hardin, army CID officer, has returned to the Kentucky hills on leave after learning that his wife is about to give birth. Arriving home, he finds trouble on all fronts: his marriage is in tatters, and his county-sheriff sister, Linda, is struggling with her first murder case. Hoping to take advantage of Mick's CID experience and ability to communicate with backcountry folk, Linda asks for her brother's help. Mick can certainly talk the talk--he spent most of his youth in the woods and yearns for the calm he found there ("He wanted to measure time by the growth of trees")--but he can't stop the progression of violence that begins with the murder of a young woman whose body was discovered deep in the hills. More murders follow, as Mick confronts the fact that "Appalachian people lived by old codes that compelled them to take action." Sure, he muses, we're fine with forgiving those who trespass against us, but "in the hills it was handier to forgive trespassers after killing them." Mick eventually sorts out how this string of trespassers came to their various and grisly ends, but, inevitably, "death begat death, and he'd been unable to stop its advance." As he did in Country Dark (2018), Offutt superbly blends classic country noir and character study, finding both great sadness and understated humor lurking in the give-and-take of his remarkable, dueling-banjos dialogue.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Offutt's brooding and bloody country noir (after Country Dark) takes readers to the hollers of rural Kentucky, where meth and Oxycontin ravage the population, and havoc is wrought by long-festering family feuds. Mick Hardin, a traumatized veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan now working as an Army intelligence agent, teams up with his sheriff sister to solve the murder of Nonnie Johnson after her body is discovered deep in the woods. In the process, they find themselves pitted against coal tycoon Murvil Knox; a meddling agent FBI agent who fingers an obvious patsy in disturbed outsider Tanner Curtis; roughneck brothers Bobby and Billy; and a pair of bumbling henchmen sent by arch-criminal Charley Flowers. Soon Hardin is up to his ears in intrigue and trying to keep a low profile as he interrogates suspects including local miscreant Fuckin' Barney; Knox's hapless nephew Delmer Collins; Nonnie's vengeful son, Frankie; and the earthy Old Man Tucker, who found Nonnie's body. Not only will Hardin have to find his man somewhere among this cast of backwoods desperados, he'll need to do so before he becomes a casualty of grudges old and new. The lean prose elicits more than a hard-boiled style, and while the brisk yet gnarled atmosphere is reminiscent of Winter's Bone, the dime-store crime novels of Jim Thompson, or even William Faulkner's Sanctuary, Offutt brilliantly evokes the body and soul of his wounded hero. It adds up to a mesmerizing and nightmarish view of what lurks just over the hills. This is sure to be Offutt's breakout. (June)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Mick Hardin, a combat veteran, works in the Criminal Investigation Division, specializing in homicide. He's home in Morehead, KY, on family leave because his wife is about to give birth, but they're having problems. Instead of sleeping at home, he stays at his grandfather's old cabin in the Kentucky hills. It's the perfect home base for helping his sister Linda, who's the sheriff. She's dealing with her first murder, but all the local big shots want her off the case, and they call in the FBI. Mick is the one, though, who knows the hills, the woods, and the families involved. He knows that local family connections can lead to long-running feuds and more death. The local murder investigation and his marital problems are reminders of a culture where blood family is everything, and there's nothing worse than betrayal. Mick's quiet observations and solutions to murder and drug cases will help him solve his own problems too. VERDICT Offutt (Country Dark; Kentucky Straight) has a reflective voice and a spare use of language. Hardin is an unforgettable character trapped between his army life and the "eye-for-an-eye" culture of rural Kentucky. Readers of James Anderson will appreciate this thoughtful mystery with a strong sense of place.--Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Acclaimed Kentucky writer Offutt follows Country Dark (2018) with another fine example of what might be called holler noir. Mick Hardin is a military homicide investigator who's temporarily AWOL, back in eastern Kentucky to sort things out with his pregnant wife, from whom he's estranged. He's holed up in his grandfather's remote cabin, drinking himself into a stupor, when his sister--the county's newly appointed sheriff, under pressure from several directions--shows up to enlist his help. An old man hunting ginseng has discovered a body up in the hills, and Linda Hardin needs the case solved, quickly and discreetly. This book looks like a standard thriller. It hits the genre's marks: a Chapter 1 corpse, a hard-drinking knight errant of a detective, etc. Ultimately, though, Offutt's primary emphasis--and the book's--falls less on the title's central word than on its final one. The star is rural Kentucky. Mick knows the land and its flora; knows the clannish, laconic, battle-scarred, loyal, often mistrustful people who live here. The book's triumph is that Offutt understands the difference between local color--which would be mere decoration--and local knowledge, which turns out to be the crucial advantage Mick has in unraveling the case (and humiliating hired guns from outside). Mick knows how to read the landscape, how to win the trust of those he needs to talk to (at one point he works a neat trick in replacing a mule that was serving as a temporary roof support), how to negotiate the blood oaths and rules of family vengeance that obtain in such places. The murder plot ends up being nearly secondary, but that's not to the novel's disadvantage: In place of plot convolutions, Offutt offers those of Appalachian folkways. The result is a fast-paced, satisfying read. Rural crime fiction that kicks like a mule. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
